SEMIKRON Foundation and ECPE honour two teams with the Innovation Award 2019 while this year’s Young Engineer Award goes to Andreas Bendicks

Abstracts:

André Haspel and Urs Boehme developed an innovative circuit topology for a quasi-isolated converter which allows for two HV systems with different air and creeping distances to be combined and ensures the symmetric distribution of the high voltage potentials in both HV systems. In the event of an insulation error in one subsystem, a safe state is achieved in the other system without excessive stress. The proposed quasi-isolated converter works similarly to a galvanic isolation converter but boasts higher power density with fewer electronic parts. This innovation is designed for use in automotive applications such as high-voltage chargers.

Johan Le Leslé and Rémy Caillaud developed a high integration, modular 3.3kW AC/DC converter for on-board battery chargers. The high efficiency, high power density converter is based on an innovative manufacturing technology where all the components including SiC bare dies, SMT components for the gate drivers and the magnetic core for the inductor are embedded in printed circuit boards. This innovation successfully demonstrates how active and passive components in the kW range can be embedded in PCBs.

The SEMIKRON Young Engineer Award 2019 goes to Andreas Bendicks from the Technical University of Dortmund for his work on "Active EMI Reduction in Power Electronic Systems by Injecting Synthesized and Synchronized Cancellation Signals" supervised by Prof. Stephan Frei.

Abstract:

Active noise cancellation is a promising approach to suppressing electromagnetic interference (EMI). Existing active EMI filters, however, suffer from unavoidable delay times since they inject a cancellation signal that originates from a measured signal. These delay times limit the suppressible frequency range and the EMI reduction achievable. To resolve this issue, Bendicks’ development uses synthesized cancellation signals. Since the signal is artificial, there is no systematic delay and bothersome effects such as phase-shifts or magnitude responses can be compensated for. The only requirement is that the cancellation signal has to be able to be synchronized with the power electronic device to maintain a destructive interference. This can be achieved in most digital controlled systems.